“Oxigen has a large foot print of 200,000 retail touch points and serves over 150 million users in real time. Mr. Ankur Saxena, CEO, Oxigen Wallet.”

Oxigen’s Mobile Wallet i.e “Oxigen Wallet” is India’s First Non-Bank Mobile Wallet, approved by RBI, enabled to make Instant Money Transfers, to nearly 100+ banks using NPCI’s Immediate Payment Service (IMPS). It also works on Financial Inclusion and is a Business Correspondent to India’s premier banks like SBI, RBL Bank and ICICI Bank. Oxigen’s PoS (Point of Sale Terminal) and the biometric scanner have excelled in providing services like eKYC and Money Transfer in urban and rural India.

In an interaction with Mobility India Oxigen Wallet’s CEO Mr. Ankur Saxena shed some light on their contribution in the digital payment industry space.

What are the key benefit for consumer and businesses to opt for this services?
Mobile Wallets offer multiple benefits to consumers as well as merchants in terms of ease of usage, convenience of transaction, cost efficiency in operations and safety & security over other modes of payments. In current situation when cash availability is low, mobile wallets have proven to be one of the major tools of payments. Over the last three weeks since demonetization announcement, rise in daily average user of mobile wallets has seen 167% growth which clearly indicates that people are adopting to new ways to make cashless transactions.

How are you increasing your reach to facilitate each and every person in India?

We have a large task force, out on the ground, educating merchants and customers, to use the wallet, to enable smooth transactions. Be it a kirana store, your local vegetable vendor, your corner chemist, or salon, all are being acquired. The task in hand is really large, however the adoption is fast, as the merchants need a solution, just as the non-credit/debit card population of India.

The petrol companies like IOCL, HPCL and BPCL, as we speak, are in a pilot with Oxigen, to do both, cashless transactions, for fuel payments at petrol pumps, and also deploy the Oxigen Micro ATM at these points, to first help collect old notes on behalf of the Govt, and deposit into the Aadhaar linked bank accounts, and then in the future, use it as a Micro ATM.

On the ecommerce front, where we hear about declining sales, due to lack of availability of cash for change – in COD payments & restricted reach with pin code based delivery of goods, to overcome that we have tied-up with eBay, to drive retail assisted e-commerce. Now people can order from a list of products on eBay using their debit, credit card, wallet or even by paying in cash at Oxigen retail touch points.

What are the key challenges for you as more and more people are looking for such kind of services in this high time.

Primarily, the biggest challenge was to educate the potential users and then to gain their confidence. In the current scenario the awareness part is moving at a rapid pace and coupled with the need of cashless transaction, new users are joining the digital payment industry which is an encouraging sign. This development will help in overall growth of the industry. We are working tirelessly to ensure both – functional infrastructure as well as wide network of merchants.

We have also conceptualized new services like Micro ATM, which will provide services of Financial Inclusion, Merchant payments and Utility payments in single PoS device. The Micro ATM will also help in taking array of banking services to the rural populations in branchless fashion. Micro ATM is a device that allows consumers with Aadhaar linked accounts in any bank to transact from the remotest areas. With introduction of Micro ATM, we see huge potential in rural as well urban areas where bank branches are located far away.

How your product is unique from other similar services?

Currently, Oxigen has a large foot print of 200,000 retail touch points and serves over 150 million users in real time. We are making dual efforts of setting up Oxigen Micro ATMs to offer cash-in/cash-out to customer’s Aadhaar linked bank account including acceptance of bank notes, load money into Oxigen wallet, as well as actively acquiring more merchants to enable digital payments through Oxigen Wallet Mobile App download. We are running on ground and online campaigns to educate common man on how to use Oxigen wallet for digital payments.

Oxigen Micro ATMs will help people in depositing old currency of Rs. 500 and 1000, new money withdrawal from merchants, balance enquiry, mobile/data/dth recharges and money transfer to other bank accounts. These Micro Atm’s will also enable merchants to offer bill payment services through Bharat Bill payment system using cash or VISA/Rupay cards. Through these Micro ATM’s/retail touch points one can also load their Oxigen Wallet using cash to use at merchant locations. Oxigen recently has also started accepting VISA debit and credit cards also along with RuPay cards at these Micro ATMs which are currently deployed at over 600 locations all over India for cashless transaction/payments. Oxigen plans to deploy over 1 million Micro ATM’s in 3 to 4 years’ time.

Oxigen has also launched a unique ePoS system through which one can make payments through their debit, credit cards, online banking using Oxigen wallet app to all the associated and new merchants of Oxigen.

How are you building consumer trust?

For us, consumer trust matters more and we believe in providing reliable, secure and innovative financial solutions to our loyal users. We keep working to enhance their transaction experience which is of paramount importance for them. At the same time, we also work constantly to address any consumer complaints or queries regarding transaction on our digital payments platform. This aspect reflects in our ‘Code of Conduct’- Oxigen upholds the importance of a fair and transparent approach in everything it does, by adopting the highest standards of professionalism, honesty, integrity and ethical behavior in all its business processes and transactions. We have trained our staff to market our products and services on their own merits and shall not make unfair and misleading statements about competitors’ products and services. All these and many more principals that we follow account for building a loyal consumer base.

As more and more banks are coming with UPI technology, will it affect Mobile Wallet services?

UPI is an infrastructure on top of which end-user apps can build and implement the features offered by UPI. A mobile wallet on the other hand, is a digital form of wallet that you can use to make payments, transfer money, and perform most activities that you can with cash. UPI has very similar way of working as Mobile Wallets however the security concern which hold people back from using online banking or debit/credit cards give advantage to the mobile wallets. Also, with our vast offline presence, we see very little impact of the UPI on our product. However, more than competition we see both working in a complementary way to achieve the common goal of taking India towards a cashless economy.

Security is also a key issue for consumers and businesses, how are you addressing that? Is user money and information is safe in your wallet services.

Oxigen Wallet uses bank grade security, having managed bank’s wallets, such as changing SIM from one phone to another triggers re-authentication through One Time Password, high level of encryption and above all, each Money Transfer transaction is authenticated with password to avoid misuse of wallet balance in case your mobile is accessed by someone for few minutes etc. This is supplemented with velocity checks on transactions limit of a newly created wallet with loading through payment gateway to reduce cyber fraud risks. Each transaction confirmation sms is sent through two independent sms gateway so that sms delay through telco congestion does not impact user experience and perceived security issue of not receiving transaction confirmation message.

Tell us about some tips to use mobile wallet services more effectively

Mobile wallets are fully safe and secured and offer a vast range of convenience. To effectively use a mobile wallet one has to keep updating wallet and understand various features offered from time to time. Like Oxigen Wallet offers prepaid visa card, in app offline and online merchants to shop from facility apart from providing regular services like- recharges, bill payment, shopping, gift card creation, money transfer etc. If one needs to send money to his family living in village, he/she can use Oxigen wallet to do so even if one does not have Oxigen Wallet using the beneficiaries mobile number only. One can also load Oxigen wallet using cash at any of the Oxigen retail touch points.